The head of the National Palace Museum (故宮博物院) said that the authenticity of ancient artifacts would be verified through academic discussions at a seminar the museum will sponsor this month.
Museum director Tu Cheng-sheng's (杜正勝) comments were in response to questions from DPP lawmaker Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻) on Thursday that more than 400 costly objects on display at the museum were of dubious quality.
"We [museum officials] are fully responsible for the authenticity of the artifacts exhibited at the museum because the museum budget comes from taxpayers' money.
"Nevertheless, I need to re-emphasize that these are academic issues and have to be clarified by means of academic discussion," Tu said.
"For this reason, the museum has organized a seminar on Dec. 13 and 14, which will be attended by 64 jade specialists and 136 art connoisseurs, with an aim to clear the air regarding allegations of the quality of the jade objects at the museum."
Tu said that the jade exhibition was being held, in part, as a way to earn the trust of the public by showing what sort of objects the museum has.
More than 800 jade objects purchased by the museum since 1997 are currently on display. To better compare the quality of these pieces, the museum has borrowed a stone palette and a jade tiger from the Qing dynasty from the Academia Sinica's collection.
A museum official said the stone palette was borrowed to compare with its counterpart kept by the museum, which was alleged by Chen to be a fake.
Teng Shu-ping (
"In many cases, differences between real and counterfeit objects are tremendously hard to identify. Specialists need to use a microscope to examine an artifact to evaluate whether it is an ancient piece or a recently made copy," she said.
Chen on Thursday had said that he had purchased jade objects cheaply from the local market that were carbon copies of those in the museum's collection, which cost considerably more.
Teng said that she welcomed Chen to bring his pieces to the museum so they could look at them with qualified experts on jade.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS